Free is not a burden. Giving things away for free is all about opportunity … the opportunity to share your knowledge with someone who needs the help, the opportunity to enhance someone else’s life, the opportunity to differentiate yourself/company from others, just the opportunity to do.
From a client standpoint, paying or not, they have picked you. If they were a paying client there would be high fives for the new client coming on board but since they are free there are no high fives, no happy hours to celebrate or no press releases. The fact still is that they have chosen to work with you as they view you as someone who can help with their graphic design, advertising, social media marketing, blog, etc. Working with clients for little or no compensation empowers them to get out there and be your cheerleader with the biggest megaphone. They will tell everyone they know about what they have learned and in doing so, about the work you have done for them. They will not broadcast that you worked for free as that was exclusive to them, your special deal that they do not wish to share. Now, recognizing that we need to eat, we cannot work for free all the time, however passing up an opportunity to work with someone at little or no compensation very possibly is passing up a “big meal.”
Let’s take it to “our world”. Every blog that you read, something is being given away; something of value to you. It can be the opinion of the blogger to provide you insight of how they think, feel, react, tips, ways, ebooks, contests – something. If not, you would not return. There is opportunity for the blog to be spread around and around and around which now exposes the blogger to new eyes and new opportunities. Many bloggers are not paid so they are providing free content on their free time.
Outside of volunteers and some bloggers, I am not sure that anyone aspires to work for free every day. However, providing your services or product to someone without compensation can open the door to so many opportunities. There will always be some who feel that they are deserving or entitled to always be paid. I suppose that works for them but by not willing to throw out a helping hand, opportunities are passing them by.
Note, there are some who do have the money to pay for it but are not willing to as very well written by Naomi Dunford. We do our best to avoid this but it happens. Sometimes you can see them coming a mile away and we avoid them but others we can only walk away knowing that they are seedy but we still did a good job.
What do you think is free an opportunity or burden? If we give it away for free does it lose value?
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